"Conspiracy" is defined as a group with a shared, secret plan to do a particular wrong or unlawful thing,
and this implies shared intent among the members of the group. If you are going to accuse a group of persons of conspiracy,
you need to prove not only intent, but shared intent. If you cannot prove intent, then all that you have is a group of persons
who acted in a certain way and the result was a wrong or unlawful thing.
And that is where the failure of "conspiracists", by which I mean those who jump to conspiracy as an explanation of things either
without verifiable evidence or without conspiracy being the most probable and logical interpretation of this verifiable evidence.
People who fit into this category assume intent without evidence. Worse, this assumption becomes an overarching interpretive
paradigm, which is just a complex way of saying that as soon as anything happens, they immediately jump to conspiracy as the explanation.
For example, let's take a look at Colombia's drug production. Colombian farmers used to be profitable. Then, the U.S. offered
Colombian politicians IMF loans and various grants in exchange for opening the border and lifting trade tariffs on U.S. agricultural products.
It would turn out that these politicians frequently pocketed the money rather than use it for developing their country.
Simultaneously, the U.S. subsidized (and continues to subsidize) U.S. agriculture as well as certain parts of the transport costs of shipping
this subsidized agriculture around the country and around the world. The principal reason for pressing Colombia to open the border and lift
tariffs and form granting subsidies to U.S. agriculture and transport is that agricultural and transport companies make campaign donations
and lobby congress and the president as well as giving them private incentives (e.g., insider trading tips). U.S. agricultural products
flooded the Colombian market, and domestic production could not compete. All the same, Colombian farmers needed to make a living.
That is when they began moving to drug production. And due to the nature of drug production (i.e., it is illegal and run by illegally armed groups),
these farmers could rarely escape this lifestyle if they wanted to.
Then the U.S. drug war began. Again, the U.S. offered incentives to Colombian politicians if they would allow the U.S. to wage war on these
illegally armed groups and, all to often, desperate and coerced farmers. Again, these Colombian politicians pocketed most of the money.
Part of the reason for the way this drug war played out in Colombia was that private military contractors and military-industrial complex
in the U.S. were making campaign donations and lobbying congress and the president and, again, giving them private incentives. In turn
these contractors and this complex received both subsidies and contracts for U.S. military equipment and activities.
To summarize, here is what we know: using American taxpayer dollars, the U.S. paid corrupt politicians to open their borders to U.S.
subsidized goods, which sent their farmers into drug production and gave rise to drug cartels, which in turn gave a justification for a
U.S.-waged drug war in Colombia, carried out largely by U.S. subsidized military contractors on U.S. subsidized military equipment—
and at each level of this, the politicians involved in making the decisions are receiving campaign donations, lobbyists, and private incentives.
But here is what we do not know: we do not know if there was intent at any level; if there was intent, we do not know if it was
shared within a level or between levels or among all levels; if there was intent, we do not know if it came beforehand and was
the cause or if it emerged as an actor or actors became aware of the benefit they were drawing; and, we do not know if whatever
shared intent may or may not have been present in the Colombian case applies to any other case.
In short, what I have just described is not a conspiracy. There is no proof of a shared intent to do anything wrong or unlawful
within or between any of the levels of political interaction. Yes, perhaps some of the things ought to be illegal (for example, private campaign financing)
and perhaps some of the things have now been made illegal (for example, giving congress insider trading tips), but even
if they are illegal now or ought to be, they were not then; yes, U.S. politicians used taxpayer dollars to the profit private
entities, which then returned money to the politicians in the form of campaign finance, lobbying tactics,
and private incentives; and, yes, the result was a devastating and inhumane and immoral for many Colombians and Americans.
However, you cannot make the jump from "this is what happened" to "U.S. politicians, Colombian politicians, U.S. agricultural actors,
U.S. military and military-industrial actors all got together and deliberately created the drug problem from scratch for their own profit."
Such are the flaws of conspiracy theorists, who ought to be called "conspiracy assumptionists": (a) they project shared intent
where it may or may not be present; (b) they the treat complexly composed entities as single actors, namely the
government, which facilitated finger-pointing; (c) they carry over these projections to all cases where these wrongly
defined actors may be involved; and (d) they frequently they discount evidence that falsifies or, at least, calls these
accusations and/or this interpretive paradigm into question.
And the problem with all of this is that it harmfully reduces the discussion to "the government is evil", when if we were to look
at the actual relationships and inner workings of those relationships that form these phenomenon, we would be able to diagram
the problems and put checks and controls in to eliminate or reduce the causes.
For this reason, I ignore conspiracists: they misdirect attention, distort information, and devolve discussion—all of which is harmful to the betterment of social life.